Experimental Characteristics of Mechanical Continuously Variable Transmission with Internal Force Functions

The paper proposes a new type of a mechanical continuously variable transmission with internal force functions to upgrade the energy efficiency of a vehicle equipped with a conventional engine. The prototype of the transmission is a well-known V. F. Maltsev concurrent pulse variator in which freewheel mechanism driven members are supplemented with elastic torsions shafts. It is shown that the variator turns into a continuous transformer – a mechanical continuously variable transmission with internal force functions. There is an internal automaticity and continuity in the entire range of gear ratio changes. The configuration engineering solution is implemented in the engineering prototype. The aim of the research is experimental study of the properties and characteristics of such a mechanical continuously variable transmission. The kinematic configuration and the main structural dimensions of the engineering prototype are given. Special testing facility and measuring-and-recording equipment have been developed. A set of parameters to be recorded has been specified. The accuracy of their measurement is statistically estimated. The results of the experiments are presented in terms of output and input torque dependencies on the speed of the driven shaft. It is shown that the transmission characteristics in their dimensionless form (transformer ratio and efficiency) in the function of internal gear ratio are universal. The possibility of obtaining an infinite kinematic and significant power transmission ranges by independently changing the internal link oscillation range (level of the force function) and the rotation frequency of the drive shaft has been experimentally shown. The transmission has high transforming and energy properties, which are higher than those of hydrodynamic gears.

Ver-como y epistemología hinge

This paper aims to stablishes the sense in which propositions included under the perceptual use of ‘seeing-as’, developed by Wittgenstein in the Second Part of Philosophical Investigations, are justifiable from an epistemic point of view. To do this, first, it will be clarified the internal link between ‘visual experience’ and ‘interpretation’ for the type of mentioned cases. Second, it will be shown how the ‘seeing-as’ respects the rule-following paradox’s solution, as long as it does not presuppose any intermediary or need anyone to account for what is perceived, highlighting the notions of ‘practice’, ‘familiarity’ and ‘context’ common both in the aforementioned solution and in the ‘seeing-as’ cases. Third, the general distinction between certainties or ‘hinges’ and ‘epistemic propositions’ presented by Wittgenstein in On Certainty will be applied to cases of aspect perception as a possible field of application of the so called Hinge Epistemology, showing how, in specific cases, the perceptual certainties that shape our way of life and that are groundless, can be recontextualized and merit reasonable justification.Keywords: Wittgenstein, aspect perception, seeing-as, hinges, certainty, justification.

Experimental and numerical study on largely perforated steel shear plates with rectangular tube–shaped links

Steel plate shear wall is one of the most effective dissipation systems which are commonly used in buildings. In order to improve the hysteretic behavior of shear panels, large perforation patterns may be applied, transforming the shear plate into a sort of grid systems, where plastic deformations are concentrated on specific internal link elements. This study investigates the behavior of grid systems loaded in shear where the internal links are created by cutting out internal parts, leaving rectangular tube–shaped link elements. The influence of internal link geometry on the cyclic performance of the systems is investigated experimentally. To this purpose, two specimens that varied in the width of links were fabricated and tested. The results indicate that any increase in the width of links leads to the growth of the ultimate strength, stiffness, and energy absorption capacity. Likewise, the stress distribution and fracture tendency of the tested specimens have been simulated by the finite element software (ABAQUS) and validated according to the experimental results. Based on finite element results, a suitable analytical formulation for the prediction of the shear strength at several shear deformation demands, considering the effect of thickness of the link, has been provided. Moreover, to improve the fracture tendency of the specimens, butterfly-shaped links, which varied in the middle length, were applied. The obtained results, which have been interpreted by considering the equivalent plastic strain value, prove that the shear panel behavior improves significantly when butterfly-shaped links are considered.

n-Ary Cartesian Composition of Multiautomata with Internal Link for Autonomous Control of Lane Shifting

In this paper, which is based on a real-life motivation, we present an algebraic theory of automata and multi-automata. We combine these (multi-)automata using the products introduced by W. Dörfler, where we work with the cartesian composition and we define the internal links among multiautomata by means of the internal links’ matrix. We used the obtained product of n-ary multi-automata as a system that models and controls certain traffic situations (lane shifting) for autonomous vehicles.

Power-organizing and Ethic-thinking as two paralleled praxes in the historical existence of mankind: A semiotic analysis of their functional segregation

This article is dealt with at a historical-strategic level. Historical processes can be functionally divided into two sections: the social-material-directed Power-organizing part and the cultural-spiritual Ethic-thinking part. Thus there exist two corresponding dynamic-operative functions in history, which are guided and impelled by different motivations, methods, and destinations involved in the two functions. The Ethic-practicing praxis has been always performed through the empirical-humanist-rational ways, which today can be more effectively embodied in human sciences to be reorganized by the general-semiotic (GS) strategy. So there are two kinds of human historical courses: the one as the materialist-directed power-organizing part and the other as spiritual-theoretical-directed ethic-reflecting part. From a historical-philosophical point of view, the former is to prepare the material-conditions/means for supporting the latter as the ethic-spiritual mission that is directed towards exploring the meaning/value foundation for human existence. Lacking in the internal link between the two historical-pragmatic functions the ethic-spiritual praxes should manage to find a separate strategy for actively continuing its independent ethic task by dint of wisely/bravely shunning the materialist-determinism issued from the technical/commercialized globalization era.

Supporting navigation in Wikipedia by information visualization: extended evaluation measures

Purpose – The authors introduce two semantics-based navigation applications that facilitate information-seeking activities in internal link-based web sites in Wikipedia. These applications aim to help users find concepts within a topic and related articles on a given topic quickly and then gain topical knowledge from internal link-based encyclopedia web sites. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The WNavi s application consists of three information visualization (IV) tools which are a topic network, a hierarchy topic tree and summaries for topics. The WikiMap application consists of a topic network. The goal of the topic network and topic tree tools is to help users to find the major concepts of a topic and identify relationships between these major concepts easily. In addition, in order to locate specific information and enable users to explore and read topic-related articles quickly, the topic tree and summaries for topics tools support users to gain topical knowledge quickly. The authors then apply the k-clique of cohesive indicator to analyze the sub topics of the seed query and find out the best clustering results via the cosine measure. The authors utilize four metrics, which are correctness, time cost, usage behaviors, and satisfaction, to evaluate the three interfaces. These metrics measure both the outputs and outcomes of applications. As a baseline system for evaluation the authors used a traditional Wikipedia interface. For the evaluation, the authors used an experimental user study with 30 participants. Findings – The results indicate that both WikiMap and WNavi s supported users to identify concepts and their relations better compared to the baseline. In topical tasks WNavi s over performed both WikiMap and the baseline system. Although there were no time differences in finding concepts or answering topical questions, the test systems provided users with a greater gain per time unit. The users of WNavi s leaned on the hierarchy tree instead of other tools, whereas WikiMap users used the topic map. Research limitations/implications – The findings have implications for the design of IR support tools in knowledge-intensive web sites that help users to explore topics and concepts. Originality/value – The authors explored to what extent the use of each IV support tool contributed to successful exploration of topics in search tasks. The authors propose extended task-based evaluation measures to understand how each application provides useful context for users to accomplish the tasks and attain the search goals. That is, the authors not only evaluate the output of the search results, e.g. the number of relevant items retrieved, but also the outcome provided by the system for assisting users to attain the search goal.

Detecting Local Community Structures in Networks Based on Boundary Identification

Detecting communities within networks is of great importance to understand the structure and organizations of real-world systems. To this end, one of the major challenges is to find the local community from a given node with limited knowledge of the global network. Most of the existing methods largely depend on the starting node and require predefined parameters to control the agglomeration procedure, which may cause disturbing inference to the results of local community detection. In this work, we propose a parameter-free local community detecting algorithm, which uses two self-adaptive phases in detecting the local community, thus comprehensively considering the external and internal link similarity of neighborhood nodes in each clustering iteration. Based on boundary nodes identification, our self-adaptive method can effectively control the scale and scope of the local community. Experimental results show that our algorithm is efficient and well-behaved in both computer-generated and real-world networks, greatly improving the performance of local community detection in terms of stability and accuracy.